Wednesday 16 August 2006

The world-renowned Pompidou Center of Paris, which set out in March to celebrate the work of Los Angeles artists, has accidentally destroyed two of their works — which fell from museum walls. A third piece was slightly damaged.

I saw the LA show: like everything else at the Pompidou, they stuffed so much into this one exhibition there was no way you could take in everything in a single visit, even if you stayed all day. There were about twenty videos or films, some an hour long, in addition to a couple of hundred static works. Perhaps they were planning for attrition.

After a year in Europe it was great to see a substantial body of art from a place that was new, modern, urbanised (or suburbanised), and spacious (yeah, like Australia). One of the side effects of moving to the UK from Australia is that it has made me want to live in the USA. Even though I can’t drive.